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The British political cycle has entered a disreputable period from which there is no obvious sign that it will ever emerge. Political leadership, as Nigel Lawson remarked at the St Ermin’s hotel, is about making a decision and then creating the consensus. Tony Blair has lost that gift. The future will belong to the political leader — perhaps Gordon Brown, maybe Michael Howard — who can recapture it.

John Major reacted with pleasing urgency to my observation, made here last week, that he held back from airing private reservations about Iraq because of close connections with the Bush family. By Sunday morning the former prime minister was on Breakfast with Frost, airing doubts about the deployment of British troops outside Basra. What followed is fascinating. Within hours an emissary from the Bush machine was on the phone, voicing dismay and urging John Major to pipe down. This curious little episode demonstrates the naivety of claims made by many Blairite commentators that the new British military deployment was of no political interest to President George W. Bush. The British debate is actually the object of anxious fascination, as the Bush camp’s attention to detail in the case of John Major shows.